Toddler who died of swine flu visited Houston mall

[FarCenter]

By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN, Associated Press Writers

Thursday, April 30, 2009

A Mexico City toddler who became the first swine-flu death on U.S. soil spent a day with his family shopping at a huge indoor mall in Houston the day before he began to show symptoms.

Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos, who spoke with the boy's aunt, said the family spent three nights in Houston just before he fell ill. After spending time in Houston, including at The Galleria mall, they drove the 350 miles back to Brownsville, where he was hospitalized on April 8.

When the hospital there could no longer care for the 23-month-old boy, he was taken to Texas Children's Hospital in Houston on April 14. The boy, who had underlying health problems, died Monday.

<SNIP> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/04/30/national/a080042D49.DTL

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It seems just as likely that the boy contracted the disease in the US as in Mexico, given the incubation period for flu.

The conjecture that illegal aliens are bringing the flu into the US is no more valid than the conjecture that it is being brought back by students on spring break.

[whoneedstickets]

1. Get real....

..The flu originates in Mexico, this kid comes from Mexico and the day after visiting the mall develops symptoms and you think, despite less than 150 confirmed US cases scattered around the country that SOMEHOW this kid picked this up in the USA rather than carrying it across the border?? I'm not keen on branding illegal immigrants as virus bags, but I'm not planning to turn my brain off either.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

2. How do you know the flu originates in Mexico?

[whoneedstickets]

3. Because they think they have identified patient zero there..

...or is this all some black helicopter conspiracy. Frankly I'm calling it the Mexican flu (since H1N1 Novel is a mouthful and the poor swine have nothing to do with it).

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

4. They found the first known patient there.

That doesn't mean he was the first to have it.

This could have been floating around for months, maybe years, before exploding in Mexico.

Could have come from Iceland, for all you know.

[whoneedstickets]

6. Good enough for me! I'm callin it the Mexian flu...

..mostly just to piss off you activist.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

8. I'm going to call it the dumbantimexicanbigot flu.

Because I hope they get it and die.

[FedUpWithIt All]

9. ...

:eyes:

[Jazzgirl]

11. That explains why you haven't posted anymore

than you have in the last few years.....

[Junkdrawer]

5. CDC Confirms Ties to Virus First Discovered in U.S. Pig Factories

The worst plague in human history was triggered by an H1N1 avian flu virus, which jumped the species barrier from birds to humans and went on to kill as many as 50 to 100 million people in the 1918 flu pandemic. No disease, war or famine ever killed so many people in so short a time. We then passed the virus to pigs, where it has continued to circulate, becoming one of the most common causes of respiratory disease on North American pig farms.

In August 1998, however, a barking cough resounded throughout a North Carolina pig factory in which all the thousands of breeding sows fell ill. A new swine flu virus was discovered on that factory farm, a human-pig hybrid virus that had picked up three human flu genes. By the end of that year, the virus acquired two gene segments from bird flu viruses as well, becoming a never-before-described triple reassortment virus—a hybrid of a human virus, a pig virus, and a bird virus—that triggered outbreaks in Texas, Minnesota, and Iowa.

Within months, the virus had spread throughout the United States. Blood samples taken from 4,382 pigs across 23 states found that 20.5% tested positive for exposure to this triple hybrid swine flu virus by early 1999, including 100% of herds tested in Illinois and Iowa, and 90% in Kansas and Oklahoma. According to the current analysis, it is from this pool of viruses that the current swine flu threat derives three-quarters of its genetic material.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5569987&mesg_id=5569987

[whoneedstickets]

7. So 3/4 comes from US swine via humans in 1918 and the other 1/4 is Mexican...case closed.

[Junkdrawer]

12. Looks to me like we infected Mexico....

And then the RW xenophobes blame the Mexicans.

[FarCenter]

10. The incubation period is 1-5 days

The timeline is -

- fly from Mexico City to Matamoros

- cross the border at Brownsville

- drive to Houston

- spend three nights in Houston,

- boy becomes ill.

So if he carried it in from Mexico, he would have had to been at the long end of the incubation period.

I think there are many more than 150 cases in the US. Those are only the confirmed ones. Lots of people would have come down and just thought that they had the normal "Montezuma's revenge" from visiting Mexico.